The detachable piece fits around a helmet to protect the
face, neck and ears from increasingly harmful ultraviolet rays.
More new cases of skin cancer are diagnosed each year in the
U.S. than breast, lung, colon and prostate cancer combined.

The generally puny brims on cycling and other sport helmets
are little help in this area.

On my daily commute across Manhattan, I’ve tried wearing a
wide-brimmed hat underneath a helmet. It interferes with the
helmet’s ventilation and fit, and it looks like your hat’s
wearing a hat.

Teresa Bryan, a trained biochemist in the San Francisco bay
area, said that she and her husband, Erik, an electrical
engineer, came up with Da Brim while baking in the sun during a
climb at Yosemite National Park.

She searched online for products offering sun protection
while wearing a helmet and couldn’t find anything, she said in a
telephone interview.

It took almost a year to locate a manufacturer who would
create the brims to their specifications and standards.

“We were told we were revolutionary, not evolutionary,”
she said of their unconventional design.

Flying Nun

I brought my Da Brim to Charlie McCorkell, an engineer and
cycling activist who opened retailer Bicycle Habitat in
Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood in 1978. I wondered how often his
fashionable downtown customers raised the quandary of small
brims.

“You’re about the first person to ask,” McCorkell said.
“It’s only been 35 years.”

McCorkell inspected my Da Brim. “The wind is going to pick
you up like the Flying Nun,” he said, referring to the 1960s
Sally Field sitcom.

Mine does rattle when exposed to heavy winds, and it flies
off when not properly fastened to the helmet. It isn’t for
anyone racing to the office or in the Tour de France, given the
drag.

And a big brim can obscure the field of vision for a
cyclist leaning forward, said Randy Swart, director of the
Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute, an Arlington, Virginia-based
nonprofit. He’s nonetheless for sun protection.

“Young people are not thinking about retirement funds or
how their skin will age,” said Swart, 70, who lost a piece of
his right ear to melanoma, a life-threatening skin cancer.
“They should be.”

Smaller Brims

In response to concerns about aerodynamics, the Bryans have
introduced new products with slightly smaller brims. In all,
they’ve sold about 25 Da Brims in Manhattan. Hence, we’re a more
exclusive club than local billionaires.

And amid a hot summer, the perplexed stares have given way,
for the most part, to compliments. “Pretty cool,” I hear. Or,
“I like that.”

The attention of strangers is a small price to pay for
effective, if conspicuous, sun protection.

(Philip Boroff is a reporter for Muse, the arts and leisure
section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

Muse highlights include James Russell on design, Michael
Luongo on dining in Buenos Aires.